


I've Heard Worse

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s08e09 Flatline, F/M, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 02:39:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16589237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Even when Clara Oswald is saving the world, she's still having to deal with the same old story: man sees woman. If only the rest were so poetic.





	I've Heard Worse

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sat in my folder for a really, really long time (...pushing three years). Inspired by the comment in Flatline in which someone tells Clara "cheer up, love. Might never happen," this piece came about to try and show the kind of stuff women have to put up with a lot - even when they're trying to save the world.
> 
> Warnings for some fairly crappy sexist language and general sexist... ick.

She’s sixteen and trying desperately to hide the blossoming of her chest from everyone, afraid of what it signals to the world around her, afraid of who she’s becoming. She hides away in her room and pretends she’s sick, binding her chest up with her nan’s scarves, fighting growing up. Her mum takes her to buy a bra and she kicks and screams, but in the end she cedes and comes home with two patterned B-cups.

She’s seventeen and she’s walking home from college with Nina, arm in arm, and a man leans out of his van and shouts “nice tits!” at her. She runs home crying and curses being a girl, curses growing up, curses her body, and doesn’t venture to school the next day. She tells her mum she’s unwell and stays at home, engrossed in Jane Austen and wondering if Lizzie Bennet ever had to deal with this sort of thing. 

She’s eighteen and it’s her first night out at university, dancing in a club, when a guy comes up behind her and grabs her. She pushes him away and he calls her a cock tease, a slut, a whore, and she’s too angry to care, so she slaps him and they escort her off the dance floor while he stands there grinning. Her peers tell her she’s overreacting and she wants nothing more than to go home, but she won’t be seen as giving up, so she studies hard and avoids having a social life lest it ‘give the wrong impression’. 

She’s nineteen and she’s stood outside the house trying to breathe, trying to remember what it’s like not to hurt, wishing her mum was there beside her. She wipes her eyes on a Kleenex and a passing van driver honks at her. “Cheer up love!” a voice shouts. “You’d look prettier if you smiled!” She punches the wall, filling her nails with grit, and wishes her mother was still here to tell her what to do.

She’s twenty and she’s read all the books on women’s rights she can find, but she’s still not sure what to do when her lecturer puts his hand on her knee and tells her she’s a pretty girl. She changes module and doesn’t tell a soul and tries to just focus on graduating, but it eats away at her until she tells her dad. The lecturer leaves quietly a month later, and the guilt nags away at her for weeks, even though she knows she’s done the right thing.

She’s twenty-one and she’s lugging her backpack on the Tube in a heatwave, enjoying the artificial breeze on her bare legs. A man offers to help her, reaching for the bag, and then his hand is patting her bum and she pushes him off, swearing and stumbling down the platform until he’s out of sight. She collapses into a seat and wonders whether things will be better in Thailand. 

She’s twenty-two and exhausted from trying to wrangle Angie and Artie all day, her face devoid of makeup as she stumbles out of Sainsburys with the weekly shop, and a builder yells “get yer tits out!” She’s too tired to care, putting one foot in front of the other, and then he turns nasty. “Bitch, skank, fat cow,” follows her down the street, and she tries to close her ears to it, but each word stings like a knife, no matter how many times she’s heard it. 

She’s twenty-three and she’s been up all night trying to bake a cake for this event at the school when a middle aged man sidles up to her and gives her a winning smile. “You’re awfully young to have kids,” he begins, and she sighs tiredly. “And awfully trim…” his eyes roam her figure and when she tells him to piss off, his face turns nasty. “Alright, you’re not even all that. Ugly slut.” She grits her teeth and tells herself to smile, smile, smile for the children, but she wants nothing more than to go home and take a long shower. 

She’s twenty-four and the builders are doing up the kitchen, so she doesn’t even leave her room most days. She tells the kids she’s ill and prays for the day that the men in high-vis will be gone so that she can carry on with her life and not have to worry about bumping into strange, smirking men in the bathroom or in the hall.

She’s twenty-five and she’s taken to dressing as dowdily as possible, but the next door neighbour still wolf-whistles after her when she leaves the house to take the kids to school. She grits her teeth and tells herself that one day she’ll leave, that she won’t be here forever, but it still irks her, and one day she snaps at him in front of the kids. After that, he barely even smiles at her, but sometimes she hears his muttered insults. 

She’s twenty-six and she might not be well-versed in the local customs, but she understands the alien’s intention when it looks her up and down with what she imagines to be a smirk. She walks a little closer to the Doctor and he shoots her a strange look when she takes his hand, but he doesn’t shake her off and she’s grateful for that at least. 

She’s twenty-seven and confident when someone shouts “cheer up love! It might never happen!” but when she turns to swear at him, she sees the apology in his eyes and she doesn’t have it in her to be angry. Today she is the Doctor, and nothing can bring her down when she’s got a mission like this, not even idiots like him. “I’ve heard worse,” she assures him truthfully in response to his apology, sighing inwardly and reminding herself that perhaps, in fact, he might have been trying to be nice.

She’s twenty-eight and walking behind the Doctor, texting, when someone shouts “nice arse!” and that is _it,_ she has had enough, and she runs after the offender with malice burning in her eyes, screaming and slapping at him until he makes his escape with a muttered ‘crazy bitch’ that stings more than his earlier appraisal. When the Doctor looks at her with surprise, she snarls at him snappily and he retreats to the TARDIS while she cries on a park bench, her eyes red-rimmed, and even then some idiot makes a comment, so she stalks back to the TARDIS with her wounded pride and slams the door to her bedroom behind her. 

She’s twenty-eight and a half and struggling to explain it all to the Time Lord by her side as they sit in a far-away meadow in the light of an alien sun. She doesn’t think he’ll grasp the concept; doesn’t think he’ll be able to comprehend that she doesn’t need a protector, just for him to understand what it’s like for her; but instead he takes her by the hand and solemnly vows to injure the next man who steps out of line, with such solemnity that she laughs. She loves him in that instant more than she ever has before, as he looks appalled by the reality of what she has faced for so long, and she reminds herself that there are still good people in the world. 

She’s twenty-nine and she’s dead and someone opens her memorial page on Facebook. They scroll onto a photo of her and comment “pity, she was hot.”


End file.
